In The Footsteps of Rurik A guide to the Viking History of Northwest Russia By Dan Carlsson and Adrian Selin Financed by EU In the footsteps of Rurik A guide to the Viking History of Northwest Russia By Dan Carlsson and Adrian Selin Financed by EU 3 AUTHORS Dan Carlsson, Adrian Selin LAYOUT AND FORM Dan Carlsson ILLUSTRATIONS AND PHOTOS Dan Carlsson, if not otherwise stated COVER PHOTO AND LAYOUT Photo Natalia Eunisova Layout Roland Hejdström PROJECT IMPLEMENTED by HTSPE and EuroTrends under contract 2011/260-699 © 2012 NDCP and the authors 4 Preface Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture The Northern Dimension (ND) is a common policy of the EU, Russia, Norway and Iceland, with Belarus also playing an increasingly important role in the cooperation. ND was first initiated in 1999, and it gained new momentum after the adoption of a revised ND Action Plan in 2006. ND is based on the principle of equal partnership among the partners. The cooperation takes place in the form of meetings of senior representatives from the participating countries as well as in the four partnerships: The ND Environmental Partnership (NDEP), the ND Partnership for Public Health and Social Well-being (NDPHS), the ND Partnership for Transport and Logistics (NDPTL) and the ND Partnership for Culture (NDPC). The NDPC is one of the newer partnerships. Its preparation started in 2008. In May 2010 a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the participating countries and an NDPC Action Plan was submitted to the ND Ministerial Meeting in November 2010. The Partnership became operational in January 2011, and it has a small secretariat hosted by the Nordic Council of Ministers in Copenhagen. The NDPC also has a Steering Committee, which is composed of representatives of the participating countries and which meets regularly. For more information on the NDPC and its activities see www.ndpculture.org 5 The mission The NDPC Steering Committee has identified Viking heritage as a topic of common interest for the participating countries. While the Viking Route is an important European cultural route, it has been largely dormant. The Route offers potential for the development of cultural tourism across the borders in the Northern Dimension area, and is therefore of interest for the NDPC. The background to this initiative is that Viking heritage has long been of common interest in Western Europe, as well as in Canada, as a resource for cultural tourism, with places like The Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, The Hedeby museum in Germany and the ship museum in Roskilde, Denmark, as well-known examples. Many of the sites are on the world Heritage list, like L’Ans aux Meadows at Newfoundland, Canada, the Viking town Birka in Sweden, the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway, as well as the famous stave churches in Norway. While many of the Viking settlements in Northern Europe already exist as heritage sites, less is known about the Viking Route heritage sites located in Russia and the information available on them is largely available in the Russian language. The NDPC Steering Committee therefore decided that a study on the Viking heritage sites in Russia was needed, to have a survey of the sites and information on their state and development needs. Eventually the heritage sites located in Russia could be connected with those located in other countries to complete the Viking Route. Besides being well taken care of, many sites are direct focal points for tourism, and part of international visits, not at least the ship museums in Denmark and Norway, visited by huge number of tourists from all over the world. It has to be concluded that the tourist side of the Viking heritage is to a very high degree a Western European phenomenon. It can clearly be seen as a biased picture, 6 while the Eastern side of the Baltic Sea to a very high degree was a part of the Viking history, not at least the rivers leading down to Black Sea and Caspian Sea. This bias was noticed already while compiling the Council of Europe cultural route - Viking route, and it was foreseen that with better knowledge of sites in Russia and other areas in Eastern Europe, the selection of sites should be revised. The main objectives of the assignment was to map and give an account of the Viking Route heritage sites located in Russia, to reveal the most important of them and to analyse their status today when it comes to maintenance, marketing and open up for tourism, as well as conclude what would be needed in order to develop the Viking Route’s potential for international cultural tourism and to combine it into existing Viking Routes. It was also important to indicate the readiness of local stockholders to develop this sites as sites of Viking heritage. The mission was concluded in November 2011, and the report delivered to NDCP is the base for this short guidebook into Viking history in Russia. The idea behind this guidebook is to open up to the public the deep interaction that were at hand between the Scandinavian countries and the states on the eastern side of the Baltic Sea in the Viking Age, and point out our common history. Riitta Heinamaa Chairmen of the NDCP Board 7 8 Content Preface 5 Vikings in Russia 11 The Viking World 11 The Eastern connection 14 Runic inscriptions 21 Trade Routes 25 Towns in the Viking world 30 Politics and assimilation 30 Places to visit In the footstep of Rurik–places to visit 35 Staraya Ladoga (Aldeigjuborg) 37 Gorodische (Holmgård) and Novgorod 47 Izborsk and Pskov 61 Gnezdovo and Smolensk 73 Sarskoye Gorodische and Rostov 83 Timerevo and Petrovskoe. Jaroslavl 93 Beloozero, Kirillov and Sugorie 103 Kurkijoki and surroundings 119 Further readings 127 9 10 Vikings and Russia - a short introduction The Viking World In the year AD 789, three strange ships arrived at Portland on the southern coast of England, and Beaduheard, the reeve of the King of Wessex, rode out to meet them. He took with him only a small band of men under the mistaken impression that the strangers were traders: ”and they slew him...” records the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tersely. It adds, with over a century of grim hindsight, ”those were the first ships [of Northmen] which came to the land of the English”. In June of the year 793, ”the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne with plunder and slaughter”. The Christian monastic sites of Jarrow and Ionas, lying on Britain’s exposed northern coasts, were looted in the years immediately afterwards. In 795 raiders were recorded near Dublin, and in 799 on the coast of south-west France. As far as we know this was all the work of Norwegian Vikings. The first raids by Danes in the West were on Frisia and, in 834, the thriving and populous trading centre of Dorestad on the Rhine estuary was attacked. This was the beginning of a period of history known to us as the Viking Age, normally dated to around AD 800 - 1050, when Scandinavian peoples from the modern countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden influenced much of Northern and Eastern Europe and beyond. They travelled further than Europeans had ever gone before and established a network of communications over great distances. They exploited the riches of the East and explored the uncharted waters of North Atlantic. They settled as farmers in the barren Western lands of Greenland and discovered America five hundred years before Columbus. They were part of the development 11 Figure 1. From their home countries, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the Scandinavians penetrated the known world; from the Caspian Sea in the East to the American continent in the West, from Northern Africa in the south to the Arctic Ocean in the north. Dates indicate known attacks by Vikings. of the Russian State, and they served as mercenaries at the court of Byzantium. They ravaged Christian Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and they penetrated to the very heart of the Carolingian empire and deep into Russia. They stole and extorted massive quantities of silver and gold from their victims. Yet they also took an active part in the development of successful commercial centres from York to 12 Novgorod and Kiev, colo- nised lands in the North Atlantic and formed power- ful states. To be a Viking was strictly to be a pirate (from the Old Norse Vikingr, a pirate or raider) but it is misleading to describe more then three centuries of Northern history as an age Figure 2. In the end of the tenth century, of raiders. Scandinavians some Viking ships where blown off course, and ended up along the North American were undoubtedly respon- coast. This was followed up around AD 1000 sible for great changes by Leif Erikson, travelling from Greenland. during the Viking Age, many of which were bene- ficial. By colonising the North Atlantic Islands they extended the frontiers of Europe, while elsewhere they played a significant part in reshaping political structures. As traders they made a positive contribution, mainly by stimulating commerce and encouraging the growth of towns, as in Russia. Whether as colonisers, traders or warriors, Scandinavians reached almost every part of the known world and discovered new lands. From the Nordic kingdoms, their ships penetrated the West European coasts, sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea and, from there journeyed to Italy, Spain, Morocco and the Holy Land. From the Baltic Sea, they penetrated the Continent, travelling up Russian rivers and waterways to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and all the way to Baghdad.